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Technological Perspective & Student Learning

Everyday we are inundated by articles that pronounce major shifts in perception based on our use of technology.

Once recent article is NPRs announcement that Beloit College's annual "mindset list" is out. It's a series of historical and cultural references that will supposedly bewilder incoming college freshmen. A few facts about the class of 2019:

They have never licked a postage stamp.

They have grown up treating Wi-Fi as an entitlement.

The announcement of someone being the "first woman" to hold a position has only impressed their parents.

Kyoto has always symbolized inactivity about global climate change.

The Lion King has always been on Broadway.

TV has always been in such high definition that they could see the pores of actors and the grimaces of quarterbacks.

The proud parents recorded their first steps on camcorders, mounted on their shoulders like bazookas.

The therapeutic use of marijuana has always been legal in a growing number of American states.

They have avidly joined Harry Potter, Ron and Hermione as they built their reading skills through all seven volumes.

Google has always been there, in its founding words, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible.

This list is always interesting for what it reveals about the way that the incoming freshmen class views the world. And for educators, we have to keep in mind the cultural references that might go over their heads - the article uses referencing Watergate as an example.

In addition, a rising majority will also read on their phone. A recent WSJ articles discusses how publishers are reimagining books for the very small screen. As noted, "Ever since the first hand-held e-readers were introduced in the 1990s, the digital-reading revolution has turned the publishing world upside down. But contrary to early predictions, it’s not the e-reader that will be driving future book sales, but the phone."

In a Nielsen survey of 2,000 people this past December, about 54% of e-book buyers said they used smartphones to read their books at least some of the time. That’s up from 24% in 2012, according to a separate study commissioned by Nielsen.

The number of people who read primarily on phones has risen to 14% in the first quarter of 2015 from 9% in 2012.

A question that is still being resolved is "whether deep, concentrated thinking is possible amid the ringing, buzzing and alerts that come with phones." Are our brains being rewired to account for all of this multi-tasking? Will this be modern-day evolution? It should get us thinking about the way our students will access, learn, and synthesize material - particularly in the legal research context.

The current version of Standard 601(3)(a) was developed during the Comprehensive Review as a method of involving a law library in the process of strategic planning required of a law school. It was envisioned that the planning and assessment taking place for a law school (under what was then Standard 203) would incorporate the work done by the library under this new Standard. To ensure that incorporation, it was decided that a written assessment should be completed by the library. However, when the requirement for strategic planning for a law school was removed during a later phase of the Comprehensive Review, no change was made to the new Standard 601. As a result, the library community has been left…

Law libraries are in the information business. To act as superior guides to this information, we must also be in the people business. We must be concerned with the people who seek our information. And we must be concerned with the people who guide those seekers to the information (i.e., our staff).

Contrary to popular belief, it's not easy to be a staff person in the rigid hierarchy of an academic law library. Particularly at a time when law libraries are facing increased budget pressures that require staff to do much more with much less. This is especially challenging with longtime staff who have seen their jobs change dramatically since they were hired. Many of these folks were not formally trained in librarianship, and they may be resistant to the flexibility needed in today's law library.

Given these challenges, how do we motivate our staff to be the very best guides to our information?

To that end, there was an enlightening program at the AALL Annual Conference in 2013 t…

As we further consider how to train future lawyers for the Algorithmic Society and develop the quality of thinking, listening, relating, collaborating, and learning that will define smartness in this new age, law schools must reach beyond their storied walls.

In law, we must got beyond talking about algorithmic implications to actually help shape algorithmic performance. We need lawyers and programmers to work together to create a sound "machine learning corpus." There's potential for an entirely new subfield to emerge if given the right support. With many law school attached to major research universities, it's a great place to start this cross-pollination and interdisciplinary work.

This type of interdisciplinary work would help to satisfy the career aspirations of advanced-degree seekers but also the wishes of many college presidents, deans, and faculty members who see an interdisciplinary professional education as a path to greater relevance, higher enrollments,…